Romney’s Quiet Win in Virginia

Lynchburg, Virginia boasts the world’s largest evangelical Christian college, Liberty University, and the late Reverend Jerry Falwell’s megachurch, now run by his son Jonathan. For today’s primary election, one might have expected its residents to turn out for Rick Santorum, as evangelicals did in Michigan, or Newt Gingrich, as they did in South Carolina. But Virginia’s new unusually restrictive ballot-access rule demanded ten thousand verified signatures of any candidate who wished a spot on the ballot, and neither Santorum nor Gingrich managed to collect those signatures. What is an evangelical Christian to do when the choices are Mitt Romney or Ron Paul?

At the Heritage Methodist Church, a modest brick building, the answer was: they didn’t show up. The hall was dead empty when I walked in, except for four bored election monitors. They laughed when I said I was covering the election for The New Yorker, since they hadn’t seen much of an election worth covering. “We generally have a flow of people all day long, but it’s been pretty sparse,” poll worker Virginia Hahn said. By 2 P.M. only a hundred voters had showed up. Hahn estimated that turnout in previous years had been four times greater.

Since no other elections were taking place today, the few voters who arrived were presented with a simple paper ballot listing only two names: Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Orange signs on polling-place doors reminded those unhappy with those options that write-in votes were not allowed and would not be counted. Hahn told me that some voters had complained earlier about the situation. A man who had just walked in interjected, “We’re not too thrilled about that either!”

At other precincts, the story was the same. Barbara Saunders, monitoring polls at Sandusky Middle School, told me, “People in this area will vote no matter what! But they felt there was nothing to vote for.” At Sheffield Elementary School, poll worker Amanda McCoy told me that only fifty-seven people had showed so far. “I hear even at Liberty it’s slow!” she marvelled, referring to the school’s famously politically active students. Toward the end of the day, I stood outside Sheffield Elementary for forty-five minutes, hoping to interview voters. One woman showed up; she said she hadn’t been following the election too closely because “we don’t have cable,” and she didn’t want to give me her name.

Ron Paul supporters sought to take advantage of the lack of enthusiasm. Outside every polling place were signs displaying a ballot headlined “Vote Against Obamneycare.” The ballot displayed two options: “Paul/Santorum/Gingrich” and “Romney/Obama.” For some disaffected voters, the comparison worked. Sean Boden told me, “I want a conservative candidate, someone who believes in small government. We need Santorum.” He told me he voted for Paul strategically so Romney would be denied Virginia’s delegates.

Others dealt with the dilemma in a different way. Doug Leavitt, retired from the Lynchburg sheriff’s department, told me he was a Gingrich man. “The system is not good because you’re not getting a real picture out here,” he said. Leavitt showed up to vote but submitted a blank ballot. “It’s put a bad taste in my mouth.”

When the final numbers came in from Lynchburg, it was close: fifty-one per cent to Ron Paul and forty-nine percent to Romney. (That’s compared to a fifty-nine to forty-one per cent Romney win statewide.) Whether they stayed home, voted for Paul, or cast blank ballots, it seems clear that many residents of Lynchburg were not ready to bite the bullet and embrace Mitt Romney—not yet, at least. But Leavitt said locals certainly wanted to oust Obama in the fall. “That’s why Mitt’s coming out like a shining star. Conservative that I am, I just don’t think he’s conservative.”

Paul supporters in Virginia on February 28th. Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images.